Wheel weight SCORE!!!

[montanamike]

I went to a tire shop I've been to before but the manager wanted too much for a bucket of wheel weights. Went in to the same shop today and there was a different guy working, he said they had a bunch out back. he wanted $30 per bucket. I worked him down to $25 and I left with what would amount to 14 buckets full. I estimate 2000+ pounds. A couple of the buckets were almost all lead weights! They're still out there! Here's a pic of the score...

http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n617/mtmike/Mobile%20Uploads/Resized_20170426_163628.jpeg

[Reddirt62]

Awesome!!

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[flyer1]

Very nice. Would you let us know what the final talley is when you finish smelting them?

[lightman]

Nice score! Now the work begins! Hope you get a good yield.

[montanamike]

The last few buckets I got were around 65% but they were from a different shop. I bet these will be at least as good just by looking at them. I'll let you know!

[WILCO]

Great job!!!

[Yodogsandman]

Lucky guy! Love to see the long ones.

[OS OK]

There's something very satisfying in gazing at that picture...

[Oklahoma Rebel]

im turning green!

[montanamike]

picked up a few more buckets. should be getting close to 5000 pounds...
http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n617/mtmike/Mobile%20Uploads/Resized_20170428_161431.jpeg

[montanamike]

gotta raise some more casting funds and go clean out the rest of em... figure there is probably 15,000 pounds sitting there.
http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n617/mtmike/Mobile%20Uploads/Resized_20170428_1459591.jpeg

[308Jeff]

There's something very satisfying in gazing at that picture...

Right?

I'm moving to Montana.

[slim1836]

Some people just got the itch bad.

Slim

[montanamike]

gotta build my stash while I can. hopefully have another 40-50 years of casting left. haha

[Pb Burner]

Nice score! That will give the truck springs a work out.
Getting any shops around here to even talk to you about wheel weights is near impossible. The last time I talked a guy into selling me a few buckets of weights, he was acting like the CIA and FBI were watching him, or it was an illicit drug deal or something.

[TexasGrunt]

Ma, get ready we're taking the Cummins to visit your family in Kalispell. While y'all are chewing the fat I'll be driving around.

[lightman]

gotta build my stash while I can. hopefully have another 40-50 years of casting left. haha

This is a good strategy. Lead has already gone from plentiful and free/cheap to harder to get. Scrap yards are being bought by bigger companies and many won't sell to the public. Wheelweights are being made from other material. Plumbers and roofers no longer use lead. The printing industry no longer uses lead type. I agree, Get it while you can.

[jsizemore]

55 gal steel paint drums make great ingot containers especially with the lid and clamp. Each holds about 2500lbs "stacked" loose in muffin ingots.

[Hardcast416taylor]

I do believe you`ll need more than 2 of those 20 lb. propane tanks to melt that pile! Very nice find with the right guy to talk with.Robert

[OS OK]

gotta raise some more casting funds and go clean out the rest of em... figure there is probably 15,000 pounds sitting there.
http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n617/mtmike/Mobile%20Uploads/Resized_20170428_1459591.jpeg

"Looks like two turkey fryers, 6 bottles of propane, two 60 lb. cast pots and 3 cases of beer will make short work of this little stash! . . . :bigsmyl2: "

edit..."Nawh...better quadruple that order!"

[DerekP Houston]

"Looks like two turkey fryers, 6 bottles of propane, two 60 lb. cast pots and 3 cases of beer will make short work of this little stash! . . . :bigsmyl2: "

edit..."Nawh...better quadruple that order!"

I think at that size, you need a keg of beer to go with the turkey fryer. Slow and steady will eat that up though one bucket at a time.

[lightman]

That picture makes my back hurt! Almost need an Aleve just from looking at it!

[matrixcs]

You deserve a round of applause for your physical prowess.
Congratulation on a very significant amount of work and good fortune.

[rondog]

Looks like they're outside? That means water in the buckets, and rust. I recently did several buckets that I got for free, and some were loaded with rusty "mud". It was a nasty mess to deal with, but I got 'er done. Ended up with enough ingots to last ME forever, but maybe not some of you high-volume guys. I was surprised just how zinc weights I actually found, far more steel than zinc.

Oh yeah, the "rusty mud" means the fairy will be lurking.....

[308Jeff]

That rusty mud smells funky, too.

[montanamike]

I'm working on melting them down today. so far melted over 2500 pounds in 6 hours. using a turkey fryer burner a homemade jet burner and 2 16gallon kegs cut in half. I'll let you know how far I got tonight. it's looking like good percentages.

[montanamike]

there is lots of rusty weights and mud. but the 500,000 btu
weed burner dries em out really fast!

[OS OK]

I think you are the envy of many members here tonight!

Well done!

[montanamike]

I was wrong about how much we melted earlier... I was looking at the list of buckets we weighed. We didn't have them all melted yet anyways, we ended up melting a total of 2594lbs of weights. Out of that we ended up with 1965 pounds of clean ingots in the 1965 I added 180lbs of sweetener (linotype, scrap solder and pewter to make up for the stick on weights and to bring the tin to 2%) 1815 of that was wheel weights resulting in 70% recovery. just finished up an hour ago. Took 9 hours and 17 gallons of propane. Here are the pictures as promised. enjoy!

http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n617/mtmike/Mobile%20Uploads/Resized_20170430_152834.jpeg

http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n617/mtmike/Mobile%20Uploads/Resized_20170430_213308.jpeg

http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n617/mtmike/Mobile%20Uploads/Resized_20170430_213918.jpeg

[OS OK]

Very satisfying to look at. It sure makes a difference when you use a pot lid how fast that Pb will meld down...huh?

[montanamike]

it makes a huge difference when you have a lid. Also, anyone thinking about using a pot of this size should buy the highest btu burner they can find. the bayou classic 55,000 but is barely enough. Out of 17 buckets of weights probably 5 or 6 went into the small burners pot. the rest went to my homemade burner. its a jet burner and should be between 250-300,000 btu. I'll start a different thread on that build soon.

[Davy Sprocket]

Not to side track from the OP's great find, but what do you guys do with rusty wheel weights? I only have one bucket worth of rusty ones right now.


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[montanamike]

just melt em down like regular weights. just make sure they are dry first!

[lightman]

Thats a good days work. A good hard days work! I think the most I ever did in a day was between 2/3 and 3/4 that amount. I was younger then and prolly would have done more if we would have had more weights. That was with a buddy helping. You are quickly building a stash at this rate! Once again, Good Job!

[MaryB]

200 pounds in a day does me in! That is way beyond my capabilities!

[juan916]

Great job

[juan916]

What part of montana are you in?

[juan916]

I have 6 buckets ready for when the weather gets better

[montanamike]

I am in billings

[montanamike]

gotta raise some more casting funds and go clean out the rest of em... figure there is probably 15,000 pounds sitting there.
http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n617/mtmike/Mobile%20Uploads/Resized_20170428_1459591.jpeg

So I picked up the rest of the weights today! I think I was a little off on the weight but there is probably 11,000 pounds or so. I know these are producing at least 70% recovery so we'll see what I end up with. I'll post pics along the way... I figure it'll take 300lbs of foundrytype and probably 80 lbs or so of tin to get the alloy where I want.

[lightman]

What a score! That should firmly place you in the "Lifetime Supply Club"! That would surely motivate me to build a large natural gas fired bottom pour smelting pot.

[montanamike]

Got it all in the shed. Gonna take awhile to melt it all down...


http://i1142.photobucket.com/albums/n617/mtmike/Mobile%20Uploads/Resized_20170609_193717.jpeg

[aephilli822]

:mrgreen: dayum......


(green for jealous)

[Tripplebeards]

I've been managing auto centers and tire shops for over 25 years now. When I first started in the early nineties, the pales were 100 percent all lead WW , no zink or steel. Now a days WW lead composition is a lot softer and three quarters(or more) of the pales capicity consists of zinc and steel. It's depressing to see how little lead you end up with per pale when all said and done. If you casters need a helpful searching tip head to your local Sears auto center if it hasn't closed yet. Just closed my location down and ended up with litteraly a ton of brand new, unused, lead wheel weights from the late 70's, early eighties when WW were a lot harder composition. The newer powder coated lead WW are made softer. My locations battery room had a double sheet of approx 30'x 10' 100 percent soft lead pan flooring to keep battery acid from eating the floor when they use to assemble batteries? I ended up tearing it out. Alot of the centers that are closing still have pales of WW sitting in their shops that no one picked up that they need to get rid of. you are able to put buy bids on the wheel weights and what ever else is left in the shop for that matter. I ended up with a lifetime of lead from just the last week alone but never really worried about it since I've been in the business so long that if I ever needed lead I'd grab a bucket of WW. Just had one of my techs from years past stop by today watching me melt some of my large chunks of scrap and told me they have a 5' tall pale in his current shop that is full of WW they can't get rid of and offered them to me. Maybe I'm blessed but there has always been free WW lead for the taking in about three shops in my area any time I need it. It blows my mind to see that people can't find,pay,and fight over the stuff.

I can save you smelters some the next time you get a pale of used WW. Once there is about an inch or so of lead melted in you pan put a handful of WW in with them. Immediately stir them around two or three times. By that time the lead WWs melt leaving the WW clips, zink,and steel WW floating on the top. Skim off the floaters right away and your good to go. Never contaminated my lead with zink to date yet with this process and saves tons of time sorting them. Have done it both ways and handful dropped in and mixed for a few seconds saves a lot of time than sorting by far.

[RP]

Adding WWs to melted lead will save time on sorting its getting the lead off the ceiling that takes forever the cement floor is not as bad. It seems no matter how long I leave a bucket of WWs sitting in the shop to make sure they are fully dry there is some water still trapped in them. I would strongly advise some sort of preheat of the WWs to ensure there is no water and wear the correct safety gear.

[Tripplebeards]

Adding WWs to melted lead will save time on sorting its getting the lead off the ceiling that takes forever the cement floor is not as bad. It seems no matter how long I leave a bucket of WWs sitting in the shop to make sure they are fully dry there is some water still trapped in them. I would strongly advise some sort of preheat of the WWs to ensure there is no water and wear the correct safety gear.


Good point. Mine have normally sat around for years before I need or melt them accept for this time around. I have used a benzene torche to heat them up in the past before adding to remove moisture.

[The Dar]

I pour ingots with a ladle until I have about 1/2" left in the dutch oven. Turn off the heat, wait 10 to 15 minutes, time varies. When a sludge forms on the surface from cooling I fill the pot with WW's and relight the burner. Still enough heat in the lead to melt again quickly and gives any moisture in the added WW's time to steam off.